


toys

by jaythewriter



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Post-MH, The Owned Zone, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 18:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3660468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are in such a sad relationship with hope,” Amy tells him, when he falls to his knees and hits the dirt. </p><p>He screams into his hands, blood bursting from his ribcage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to pour out some 'follows canon' stuff and have something with Amy as one of the front runners, so, here. It does have more 'chapters' but I'm not sure if I can say it holds a linear storyline.  
> Very heavy trigger warnings for loss of autonomy over one's body, blood being mentioned pretty often, and body horror, oh lord the body horror.

(When you enter Its realm, It warps your body into something of Its choosing. There is no purpose, no rhyme or reason behind this process.)

(This solely serves as a reminder that you are here forever, and your body is Its toy.)

It takes ten, twenty, maybe thirty days of wandering through these black woods for Jay to find out he isn’t alone here.

She stands out against the dying winter sapped trees, head tilted back so she can scream to the hollow new moon. Her mouth is stretched out, gone blue from cold.

Jay doesn’t recognize Amy when he runs into her. 

What he sees is a gorgeous creature that could not exist in the real world-- if that is an appropriate name for the dimension outside of this one, they are both real, as real as the nose on his face or the constant taste of blood upon his tongue. 

But she could not have been like this in the world they were both born in, burned in. Hard pointed fingertips that are like tree branches pet through Jay’s hair as he sobs into her lap each night, forever relieved to know that he isn’t alone here. She wears thorns upon her head, hooked into her scalp as though they belong there. Her long blonde tresses, roots showing, are taking on a shade of green that match a summer forest’s. 

Upon meeting her, Jay was sure that he was going to become like her. He too would have leaves falling from his head when he lifted it up from his makeshift pillow of pulled grass. Bugs would flock to him and attempt to nestle in his green hair, and he’d have to swat them back.

The days pass by, though, and while she warps and transforms at an alarming rate until she is more plant than human, he remains the same.

“It might take time,” she says through a mouthful of grass, while Jay keeps the question of whether that counts as cannibalism to himself. “I’ve been here a way longer time than you. Might’ve been about a year. I dunno. Time is fucked up.”

They don’t make much use of their days. How can they when there is nothing here? Jay was never very good at climbing trees, and he fears the day that he’ll have his limbs wrapped around one and feel it come to life beneath him. Flowers don’t seem to grow here; if it has color, it’s either green or brown, nothing bright of beautiful. Amy is the sole proprietor of color here: a brilliant pink rose is blooming on top of her head, and she promises Jay that it will be his once it is fully grown.

When there is nothing to touch or gather but brittle leaves and twigs, the pair walks, hoping there might be a place beyond these woods. Deep down, Jay knows that there is nowhere to go, they might as well be strolling in circles amongst the same ten trees for all the progress that they are making. Amy definitely knows it as well, but she never says anything.

Still. Jay never was one to give up, not while there is an ounce of uncertainty, not while there could be a single chance of survival.

“You are in such a sad relationship with hope,” Amy tells him, when he falls to his knees and hits the dirt. He rubs at his feet, tears pooling in his eyes, because shit, yes, it hurts, he still bleeds in this world when he can’t do so many other things, can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t be held anymore because Amy is hard to the touch, solid, like a real tree.

He screams into his hands, blood bursting from his ribcage. 

Amy looks on, silent, still, sorrowful.


	2. arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He takes his hands from his ears, but when he sees who is approaching, he loses it-- he cries out, voice cracking, hands and feet scrabbling at the dirt in an attempt at a getaway. Color drains from his face (like he’s seen a ghost, and Jay is laughing, laughing in the killer's presence).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heavy chapter, tapped out while extremely tired.
> 
> trigger warnings in order that they appear: underhanded transphobia from a family member, nongraphic reference to a car crash, dissociation (probably all over the chapter), more body horror, maybe emetophobia in the form of coughing up blood, and somebody literally reaching into someone else's wound (dunno how to make that less/more specific?)

He never knew Amy well.

She was the gorgeous girl in the queer club that Alex made him go to when Jay came out to him. She was the one that dyed her hair every week, called someone over each time to help her stoop over a tiny bathtub and scrub, scrub, scrub.

Jay wasn’t summoned often, but when she did bring him, he would bring a new outfit that his aunt would send from home. While his own mother was alright with him being her son, she wasn’t so quick to adapt. For whatever reason, she thought sending him sunny skirts in shades of pastel blue and pink would bring him around.

He kept a few. Jay misses those nights spent cross-dressing in private.

But the rest of them are probably sitting in Amy’s closet now, untouched, unseen.

They cared about each other. When she made a post on Facebook about being in a car crash, Jay was the first to show up and make certain that she was okay. She was, but she made sure everybody knew that her knee was /extremely/ sore and /fuck/ that guy for talking on his cell phone, what was so important that they needed to ram into a pretty girl like /her/? Jay made no mention of the fact that she was on her phone too and patted her back.

He wasn’t her first choice of person to hang out with, though, not for lack of love or interest but compatibility. Amy likes loud, she likes colors to be darting into her face from all directions. If there is no bass in a song it is not worth listening to.

Jay liked silence, to sit on his lonesome so that he can gather his thoughts. It was lonely, but he preferred it over ruining his relationships by being a complete idiot and saying the wrong word or forgetting how to speak altogether.

He wishes for nothing but noise now, nothing but people to surround himself with, sap up their body heat and hear their words and know, /know/ that they’re real, that he’s real.

What he does have is Amy.

Tonight, her skin is cold and prickly to the touch. She jokes aloud to the moon that she did have body issues and that she would’ve changed a few things but this isn’t what she meant. He would’ve laughed before but he can’t find the energy for such things. 

How long has he been walking? Amy’s right, time doesn’t pass the way it ought to here. The sun was up a few moments ago, but it ran off long before they could get used to its presence.

Life on Earth has taught him that if he keeps going, he will find something eventually. There is no such thing as total nothingness; even the desert has cacti and a stray beast to be found hidden away in a hole it burrowed. The night is dark, not empty. You may not see anything, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there. 

This is not Earth, though. That much was clear the moment Amy started coughing up crunchy autumn leaves.

There must be somebody else here, he tells himself every time he lays his head down for rest. They are not the only ones that Alex touched and broke into a million lifeless pieces. Amy is here, he is here, and she might not remember how she came to be here but he can take a pretty damn good guess.

For now, she is what he has and she is why he feels safe putting his head down onto the dying grass, the brittle blades breaking under him. As safe as one can be in the woods, at night. 

He lays, for hours, for moments, for seconds, perhaps for months, who knows anymore? Not him. Jay’s world swishes around underneath him, and he tastes a sea that ought to be like salt but it is metal instead, rusting in his mouth. 

Is it his coughing that shakes him awake or Amy’s screeching? Perhaps a mixture? 

His eyes open to the earth and dirt is upon his tongue. The metallic flavor remains even when he sputters and coughs it out. For a split second, he is certain that he is coughing blood, but if he was, he wouldn’t have any time to think upon it. 

Amy stands tall, chest puffed out, fingertips long and jagged. The leaves upon her arms shiver in rage, and the noise that leaves her mouth cannot be considered human. High pitched, dragging itself out and drilling into Jay’s eardrums-- he has to clasp his hands over his head and duck away, and even then the sound sticks into his brain as a cluster of needles. 

He attempts to force sound from his throat. Blood gurgles, surges up to his lips. Jay gags, pushing up on his quaking elbows and spitting, the mess splattering against his hands. Sleep has blurred his vision; the red dots upon the ground swirl into a sea of crimson and back again, and when he lifts his head, he sees Amy shaking, standing over a figure he cannot make out from here.

“Please--”

A voice Jay recognizes but cannot conjure up the proper memory of, a voice he knows but his instinct protects him from recalling its origin. It’s there, in reach, and he sees a flash of a blood-soaked hand leaving prints on the forest floor. 

A hand that he can imagine wrapped around a gun, shooting it, sending a bullet cascading through his delicate human form and he sees Alex, sees his heaving chest, broken glasses, red pouring in waves from his neck and shoulder. He collapses totally under Amy when she hovers over him, her great maw stretching and breaking any bones she might have left in her transforming face. 

“Please, Amy, I’m sorry, I thought it was for the best, you would’ve suffered more--”

“I AM STILL HERE. I AM HERE BECAUSE OF YOU, ALEX KRALIE. BECAUSE OF YOU. I’M LIKE THIS BECAUSE OF YOU.”

Her voice is a roar, yet she manages to create words, stuttered and spoken slowly so that they may hammer into Alex and he will understand: this is his fault.

Jay’s ears ring, but what does he care, there is somebody else here, someone he knows. He crawls, on hands and knees, nerves alight and reaching out for the one broken spot upon his torso, where the blood pools and begins to leak through again.

Amy shrinks away at the sight of him, her blackened eyes brightening until the whites return and her brown irises glint in the moonlight. Alex takes his hands from his ears, but when he sees who is approaching, he loses it-- he cries out, voice cracking, hands and feet scrabbling at the dirt in an attempt at a getaway. Color drains from his face (like he’s seen a ghost, and Jay is laughing, he’s actually fucking laughing in the presence of his killer), and it remains pale when Jay inches into his lap.

Muddy brown eyes catch onto the intent blue ones. Jay stares, unable to really believe it, wanting too much and wanting nothing; Alex is here.

Alex.

The one at fault, the one he chased down with only good intentions.

The one he called friend.

His hand lifts, Jay sees his own hand moving but he doesn’t really think he’s commanding it.

Fingertips, warm blood, warm flesh. He digs in. Twists his hand. 

Alex unleashes an agonized shriek, reaching to tug Jay’s arm away from his neck but he cannot wriggle free. His cries prompt Jay to push deeper, open the wound until Alex is gagging--

“Jay!”

Branches tug at Jay’s collar, yanking him back, scratching marks into the back of his neck. 

He does not fight it, but he does link his legs around Alex’s waist, hanging on for life. The man falls back with him, and he-- he embraces him, arms looping upon his neck and he’s laughing again. Alex is here, Alex is /here/, he fell into the same hell that he brought others screaming into. Jay and Amy aren’t the only ones here anymore, surely there are others if they both showed up.

Jay laughs, and laughs, and sobs.

Alex is relief, Alex is anger, Alex is reassurance. 

Amy’s flower blooms that night while she’s asleep, and it dies the moment Jay plucks it free, the stem stained from the red clinging to his fingers. 

It refuses to dry.


	3. to rot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Things started getting weird for me not too long into arriving here but I’m still… pretty much okay.”
> 
> “You’ve got a weird definition of okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger-wise, it’s heavy on body horror but otherwise we’re good.

Jay awakens, kicked out of the huddle pile. He’s curled up on his lonesome, his two bedmates-- well, ground mates-- facing away from him. 

If he were a little less polite, he would wake Amy and Alex to tell them how hurt he is to be shoved out of his special spot (in the center, right where he can get the most of Alex’s softer belly and Amy can protect both of them from view of unsavory monsters now that she is the tallest, /thanks/).

But, he is a good person so he’s willing to let this one slide. Instead, he rolls onto his back and sits up, wriggling out his toes. They didn’t walk that much yesterday, did they? He can’t remember why his feet would be this stiff otherwise. Too bad pills and painkillers don’t seem to be a possibility in this universe.

They did choose to lay down by a river in the hopes of drinking from it. Jay may clutch his belly at times, thinking of food and the satisfaction of a full meal, but certainly he would have starved by now if he actually needed food. Amy eats the forest, devouring grass blades by the handful and tugging leaves off from their branches to shove into her mouth, but she says she’s never hungry either. It’s for fun, good way to distract the wandering brain.

He suspects it is much the same with water. Don’t need it. Might crave it. May as well try it while there is water nearby.

Jay crawls on his hands and knees, avoiding the inevitability of being on his feet and having to face the full extent of the pains. If he’s lucky, he could dunk his feet into the water, see what it could do for him, no idea what though if it isn’t warm and bubbling.

He tugs himself up to sit at the river’s side, mud coating the bottom of his jeans. One more little chore for himself to do, he’ll wash it off in the water. Having even one extra small thing to do is better than nothing at all. Tugging at the button of his jeans, he wriggles out of them before stepping into the water, cold enveloping his legs. It laps up at his thighs, inviting him in.

The water stands clear, revealing the bottom of the river where not a single fish swims. No moss, no strands of plant life, only Jay’s feet.

Jay’s ashen feet, dark as the skies above and solid as the rock that he stands upon.

His screaming wakes Amy and Alex-- he hears them coming before he sees them, and they stoop down beside him, unsteady on their feet. Alex tumbles into the water, unable to root his feet into the soil as Amy can. 

“Jay, breathe,” Amy commands him. Her brambly arms pin him to her chest, or what used to be her chest. Through the crashing tsunami sized waved in his head, he finds he cannot hear her heartbeat anymore. “Breathe in time with me, ok?”

“No! None of that shit!” he snarls, striking out. Amy’s skin is sturdy now, solid to the touch, and it hurts him more than it could hurt her when he shoves at her. She still stumbles back and stares with wide eyes. He’d apologize, if his nerves weren’t imitating an earthquake beneath his skin. “Look at this! What /is/ this, it’s, it’s not mud, it’s not dirt, it’s not coming off, oh, God, get it off…”

It isn’t only his feet, he sees it upon his hands now that the haze of sleep is torn from his brain. Nails dig into his flesh, carving the top layer of flesh from his body. The inky shade of black does not yield, but it does bleed, oh dear, does it bleed. Jay sees the red drops that splatter upon the forest floor fade away the moment they meet the dirt. Sapped away, consumed by the roots of these trees that feed upon their nightmares and their pumping adrenaline.

Pale hands, natural, human, living, grip his, pulling them apart from each other and restraining the trembling fingers. The fingers, not his fingers, these are not his hands.

“Chill.”

Alex’s voice commands him, and he obeys, the sound of his voice still capable of striking the nervous parts of his heart. Rising out of the river, Alex climbs back onto the shore, feet squishing into the mud. He takes in a sharp breath, looks past the man standing before him, into the shadows that the trees cast.

(there is nothing to look for anymore they have not seen It once since they arrived)

(they do not need to see It to know It is here.)

“It… looks like dead skin but it doesn’t smell rotten,” Alex says aloud. Jay bites back the sass he so wants to spit in his face; great, cool, the hands are /not/ rotten, but they are dead, good job, asshole, very soothing. “Can you feel me touching them?”

Words are piling up at the back of his mouth, blocking him from speech. He has to nod instead. That isn’t all he feels; the tiny cuts he managed to create with his nails sting, especially at Alex brushing his fingers over them. 

“They’re stiff, it hurts to bend them,” Jay admits, loosening the painful bulb sitting tight in his throat. He releases it in a long breath, letting his head fall. These are his hands. They still function, he can move his hands, they look different but they are still his hands. 

Alex takes his words as permission to maneuver his fingers about. The joints crack at the amount of pressure he has to place on them to force movement. It’s hard to breathe again-- Jay clenches his teeth, closes his eyes. 

“Does that hurt?” Alex asks at every finger, taking one at a time and bending them. Jay nods, his answer remaining the same for his whole hand. “Well, okay, so every finger is screwed. Good thing you don’t really need them anymore, huh.”

That… that touches a nerve Jay didn’t realize still existed. He slaps Alex away, shoving him back and hiding his pained fingers by crossing his arms, tucking them beneath his shoulders. He forgets to be frightened of whatever reaction he receives, standing tall, or as tall as he can on his aching feet. 

“That’s awesome, at least I don’t need to use them anymore. They’ll just fall off and I’ll probably be in immense pain for it!” 

“Hey, I was just trying to be the optimistic one here!” Alex snaps back, the little bit of tenderness in his eyes vanishing in an instant. He flicks his damp hair from his eyes, trickles of river water falling from his forehead. “Someone had to be when, honestly, Jay, there’s no way we can fucking help you. Do we look like doctors?”

“You’re being a dick, Alex,” Amy butts in just in time. She approaches Jay from behind, pressing against him. The gentle restraint reigns in Jay’s heart, keeping it from slamming out a chorus upon his ribs. “Just go back to sleep. I’ll take care of him.”

“Great, I’m the bad guy now,” Alex mumbles, but he doesn’t push beyond that. He sulks, head hanging, tromping back to the pile of dead leaves and slumping onto it. “Seriously, though, I don’t know what the hell you’re going to do for him.”

“Shut up,” Amy orders of him. He obeys-- or he has nothing else to say, as he rests his head upon his arm and turns onto his side to stare off into the empty shrubbery nearby. Satisfied, Amy turns back to Jay and kneads his fingers between hers. The joints crack, loud in this desolate night. Lowering her voice so that only Jay may hear her, she bends to be at his height. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Jay, but as long as you’re still able to walk, I wouldn’t worry about it. Things started getting weird for me not too long into arriving here but I’m still… pretty much okay.”

“You’ve got a weird definition of okay,” Jay sputters, gritting his jaw. Bones pop in and out of place, surely they will break under the strength of these branch-like fingers. If anything, though, they are soothed, and he can breathe easy again, or as easy as possible when his skin appears ready to fall off. “I’m… I’m scared, Amy, I don’t want to lose myself.”

“You’re still you,” she assures him, though her voice is hollow now, ducking her head and shielding her gaze from his. 

“Yeah, but. I don’t really want to be a, I dunno, a monster.”

Amy cuts contact between their skin and whirls away from him, bright emerald leaves fluttering from her hair and standing as a stark contrast against the grey dirt. She returns to their makeshift bed, dropping to her knees and curling against Alex’s form, back to back. 

“What’d I say?” Jay utters, wide eyes staring at the space that she occupied a moment ago. He drops his gaze to his pained toes and fingers, wriggles them, hears the joints cry out. How could anybody want this?

“What’d I do?”


	4. drowning in memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jay knows better than to hang onto hope anymore.
> 
> Annoyance. A pitfall in Tim’s path, on the way to better things, a safer place, normalcy. Nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for brief gore, alcohol use, and mentions of death, plus drowning.

Jay cannot figure out how he managed to pull off much of anything.

How he lived as long as he did. Survived. Slipping away from Alex’s grip and the bullet he had waiting for him. Escaping the gaze of an eyeless creature holding mysterious intentions for him. Managing to live on a budget of ten dollars a week. Avoiding starvation, dehydration, the works.

What puzzles him most is the longing for Tim’s company. How is he managing to do that when he can’t say he knew his middle name, the street he grew up on, what his favorite foods are?

Standing over the river again, catching handfuls of water in his cupped hands, Jay finds he misses coffee, the bittersweet concoction that kept him up through the stretched evenings. Juice, sugar on top of the illusion of fruit, pretending to be healthy, vitamin C is good for you. Tea, like coffee, though milder, more variety, soothing and in greater amounts.

(Tim loved iced tea. Spent his extra money on it and cigarettes. ‘I don’t care if it’s stereotypical, it’s fucking good,’ he barked at Jay, gave him the coldest shoulder when he laughed at the sight of the huge container. It was the worst, shuffling his feet around the empty bottles of iced tea in the car. Once, when his car’s heat died and he had to climb into Tim’s car for warmth, he opened the door to an avalanche of plastic tea bottles, tumbling out onto the asphalt and rolling down the abandoned parking lot’s hill one by one.)

(The next morning, Jay couldn’t help but notice Tim leaving his car right before they took off to find more Marble Hornets shooting locations, a plastic bag stuffed full of bottles in his arms. He crossed the street, approaching the dumpster sitting beside an apartment complex.)

(Jay smiled into his hands and looked away.)

There was no need to push each other for details, save for the ones of utmost importance. Last names, and phone numbers, personal and who to call if-- ‘Nothing will happen, but, just in case, you know, because…’

(Has Tim called his mom? Does she know that he won’t be coming home? Is she crying for him, because he broke his promise?)

(“I’ll be home for Christmas this year. I swear on my life.”)

That was not a vacation, a road trip for two. These were not times to be spent getting to know each other. Pestering for more than names and numbers means annoying the other and placing them in an awkward position. Jay gave Tim a hard time as it was by his mere existence.

(They drank together, once. It was Jay’s suggestion, because he’s good at making stupid decisions. Tim, on the other hand, is good at knocking down his suggestions and saying it’s maybe time for Jay to go to bed, instead of outright calling him an idiot.)

(Tim did not tell him it was a bad idea, not until after the first slug of whiskey. Then, again, after the second shot, and a third time when he was coughing from the burning in his throat.)

(“You’re the first friend I’ve had in years, like, a real friend, and I can’t fucking believe it’s you,” he sputtered into Jay’s ear, leaning too close, too warm, too welcoming, and he presses his mouth into his burning skin. “I’ve got this real bad habit, my fuckin’-- my doctor says I have to face my problem, y’know, instead of pretending they’re not a thing, but I ignored it ‘cos it always worked fine for me. But now you’re here, and you dragged me screaming into this, and I guess I should say thanks? It would’ve, like, crept up eventually, I don’t always remember my meds and all, and…”)

(His voice, painting a clear picture, smeared what he had created, his words slurring together, one crashing into the next.)

Alcohol twists one’s brain. Some murmur the truth of their thoughts when imbibed, and others have their words taken from their mouths and smashed into unfathomable pieces.

It must be the latter. Jay knows better than to hang onto hope anymore.

Annoyance. A pitfall in Tim’s path, on the way to better things, a safer place, normalcy. Nothing more. 

Confusing as it is that he might be thinking of Tim at all, he knows that it is better for Tim to be absent from this strange trio. 

Being here means failure to escape. It means slamming against the bars of a prison that stretches on for endless miles, for god knows how long, likely for the rest of their lives. If there is any concept of time and aging here, that is, and so far, Jay is certain that he will never grow a single wrinkle or lose his hands to arthritis.

No, just to whatever this dark shade of ash is upon his skin.

Jay succumbed to a bullet, then cold fingertips upon his heart. He watched it be pulled from his body, not a single tear within his flesh. His broken body could have been sitting open, chest parted for the eyeless but staring monster to reach into. 

Amy doesn’t recall what happened to her. She doesn’t want to. Jay will never push the memory to the surface, not unless she changes her mind.

Alex, he paws at the hole in his neck every moment of every day. Both Amy and Jay slap his hand down when they catch him, though Jay is doing it less now that Alex has learned how to use his voice again.

He says Tim made that hole.

If Tim did that, and he isn’t here, it means he’s won.

He might be out of reach of the monster. Maybe he has found the calm that he longed for.

(“What are you going to do after this is over?”)

(Jay bit back his initial thought-- ‘There is an ‘over’ to this?’ and shrugged. Planning to a time ahead of this one meant wasting energy that could be spent on figuring out what the newest line of binary ToTheArk posted meant.)

(“I wanna travel, but on my own terms. Maybe find some new friends or whatever. Odd jobs. Nothing permanent. I tried that already and, well, it worked for a while but then you came along.”)

(Jay kept his eyes on the road. Swallowed down his guilty heart.)

(“I mean it in a good way. I… thinking about it now, sitting in work every day, I don’t think I can do it. Photography, though, that means exploring places and finding cool shit. You know what I mean?”)

(If there was ever a stupid question, it would be that one. Glancing at the camera on the dashboard, full of secret nature photos hidden in the very back of its memory card, he nodded.)

Trees, nature, babbling brooks, rising mountains in the distance, it is all ruined for him. No more nature; he has nature here, sitting on his back, breathing down his neck, warping his flesh and giving him the worst headache, right in the middle of his scalp.

Jay pictures it: an asphalt river for Tim to sail down, his headlights breaking the night into pieces and leaving it to repair itself when he zips past. Deer leaping, performing a simple ballet for him, bounding away from the oncoming car. Camera in hand, tilted down, lens picking up shadows as it gazes into the leather of the passenger side seat. 

He stops, sees the sun bidding him good morning. The orange flames it spits tear apart the night, turning them brilliant shades of red and pink. There, perfect, picture perfect. The camera is in his hands when he steps out of his car, and he aims, snapping several photos in succession.

Quick, careless, but effective; he tosses the camera back into its resting place, and he hits the gas again, hoping to find somewhere to stay on this endless road. Never does he ever look at the photographs.

If there is something in them that ought not be there, he doesn’t want to know, and he is content.

He is happy and Jay hopes that is the case, that his imagination is at least close to drawing up what his true situation is now.

Tim does not deserve to see him like this. Does not deserve to see the true Alex that has emerged since he came to this place, shaking and screaming for forgiveness in his sleep. Nor does he deserve to see what Amy does now when she needs to rest, her feet rooting into the soil and her arms crossing upon her chest like a mummy’s would.

(And he thinks about him, longs for him, imagines the nights passing by twice as fast listening to him babble about the beauties he has seen. No dark veil over his eyes, he can see at last, he sees that life is worth living and that he doesn’t know how he missed it all that time.)

(Jay sinks his hands into the waters, recalls the horrific visions of his last friend flailing into the lake. Lakes of stillness-- no longer still, ripples growing into waves lapping at the shore as Tim screamed and took water into his lungs.)

(He presses his face into the river, breathes in, swallows what comes rushing into his mouth.)

(Sits there for longer than he knows ought to be possible, letting his insides fill up. An ocean inside of his body, pulling him down; he must return to the salty waters he came from, back to the depths, where monsters hide from human eyes.)

“Jay, what are you doing?”

He lifts his head, watches from out of his body, above it. The water he collected dribbles from his mouth, fast at first then slowing to a drip. Turning his head, he looks to Alex standing behind him, rubbing his head, sleep pressed into his eyes. Those same eyes grow wide when he sees the water dribbling down Jay’s front, and he takes a step back, bewildered.

“…Never mind.”

Alex turns away and returns to the shade Amy casts, the leafy branches extending from her skull providing a safe space for her companions. 

Jay stays where he is, dunking his head back into the river. Maybe if he stays like this long enough, his headache will ease.


	5. at fault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex comes to Jay with an apology. In a place as endless and empty as the one they are trapped in, though, Jay finds he cannot do much with 'I'm sorry'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overall warning for body horror, blood, and self harm (both without and with intention).

“I’m sorry.”

Alex’s voice creeps up on him, awakening the nerves standing on edge. Jay leaps from the ground, where he sat gnawing at the grass-- not for hunger but because the urge was there, and why not, when there is nothing left here to do? 

“What?” Jay sputters, the soggy brown blades falling from his lips. He reaches into his mouth, clawing out one tangled in his teeth. Hardened skin scrapes against his gums, bringing blood to the surface and staining the strand of grass red. 

Brown glassy eyes stare. Alex stares these days, a lot, but Jay isn’t certain that he is seeing. 

“I’m… sorry,” Alex repeats himself, utterly still. Hands hanging at his sides. Feet still. Eyes straight ahead, past Jay’s shoulder, into the nothing. 

“I heard you the first time, I meant why are you saying sorry?” Jay huffs into his hands, spitting blood into his palms. He wipes them onto his jeans, more brown than blue now after months of laying in mud and using dirt as a blanket. His eyes flit over to Amy, making certain that she is… still Amy, as much as she can still be Amy now. She paces in circles around the trees, her head down, shedding leaf after leaf from her green hair. These days, she is constantly creating a Hansel and Gretel style path, which is lucky considering Jay and Alex often wake to find her missing.

(“I can’t sleep very well anymore, it’s hard when you’re always standing.”)

(“Do you want us to help you get down, or…”)

(“Jay, I don’t think I can.”)

“See, that’s why I’m apologizing. You think I’m saying sorry because I hurt her while you weren’t looking.”

Jay tears his gaze from Amy and back to Alex, opening his mouth to protest and shutting it when he finds he has nothing to say. 

“…Sorry, I still don’t get it,” Jay admits, stuffing his stiff hands into his pockets. His head pulses in pain, and he grits his teeth, keeping his attention upon the matter at hand. Alex shakes his head, dropping his gaze to the dirt and kicking at it.

“You’re gonna make me spell it out. Okay. Fine. I can do that.”

He takes in a deep, unnecessary breath. They don’t need air. There is no air here, just the illusion that is here here so that they could pretend a while longer that they were still on Earth. 

“I’m why we’re here. I’m why you’re both dead, and, well, why /I’m/ dead. I’m why you are… sprouting horns on your head and why she’s a goddamn tree now,” Alex utters in a long pained huff. He clenches, unclenches, and clenches his fists again, like he wants to grab Jay, but he keeps his hands to himself, thank god. “I know saying sorry means fuck-all right now, but it’s all I can really offer when we’re stuck in a place like this.”

Jay freezes, looking Alex over, wondering if this is the coward that came screaming into this world or if he is dreaming him. Any Alex, the creature he became or the man he was before he picked up the camera, would never apologize, not if he had his way. Pride kept him rooted in place; he was never wrong, he couldn’t be wrong, or he would have to go back and fix what he fucked up and he can’t be sure if he has the strength to do that.

He’s right, though.

A single sorry isn’t going to make any of what he did forgivable, regardless of what Jay saw when he looked into his killer’s face one last time in life.

(He might as well have had no face. There was nothing left.)

“It’s… great you’re gaining some self-awareness,” Jay says after what feels like too long to be saying anything at all. He flinches at the sharp glare Alex tosses his way, taking a step back. “It’s like you said, though. Saying sorry doesn’t mean much. I appreciate it, but, I don’t know what to say now.”

“You don’t gotta say anything,” Alex says all too quickly. His stare is gone, and Jay watches his retreating back, thinks he ought to go after him but a gut feeling pins his feet into the ground. The pouting man drops down to sit with his back to a tall tree stump, its top half hacked off and laying at its side. Lifting a hand, he picks at his wound, letting it bleed free again. 

Jay would worry, if he hadn’t been doing the same to the bullet-shaped hole in his torso and found that the pain is a distraction. If either of them were going to die, or do whatever it is dead people do when they die again, he knows they would have already.

“He’s being a baby. He was hoping you’d say it was okay or something even though he /knows/ it’s not gonna be ok, like, ever.” 

A thick tree trunk sprouts up from seemingly nowhere, right by his side. It splits into two limbs, and an arm extends toward him. Amy’s rough fingertips brush over his shoulder, patting. Jay pinches his lips together, still watching Alex. Perhaps he’s afraid that Alex will venture off on his own, but where could he go when this is the single place they can be?

“If he knows I’m not just gonna say that he’s off the hook, then why did he ask?” 

“Because, like I said, he’s a big baby,” Amy reminds him, her exasperation matching his ounce for ounce. She rubs his back, the sensation hardly calming when she is rough bark and he is fragile human skin. “Some part of him thought you might at least say he was forgiven but he’s gotta get that he won’t feel better about himself regardless of what we say. That’s something he has to deal with on his own time.”

Alex doesn’t move from his spot, stays put while he digs into his flesh, like he might be able to shovel out his anger if he digs deep. 

(Jay touches his ribcage, runs his fingers over the trembling crater in his flesh. His is closer to his aching heart. Maybe he could do the same as Alex. And, unlike him, come out successful.)

“I wanna forgive him,” Jay confesses in a whisper, laughing inside and letting it out when Amy laughs as well. “I dunno why that’s funny. It’s not very funny at all.”

“Yeah, no, it’s like, the worst joke I’ve ever heard, because I want to forgive him too,” Amy shakes her head, sends a colony of petals raining down on Jay’s head. They sit upon the twin spots of pain in his skull, cool, gentle, a better remedy than a handful of nameless pills. “So you don’t think it was him that did this either, huh.”

“No, I know it wasn’t him. Not /him/, he could’ve stopped it, I think, but, I wasn’t able to stop it either when it happened to me.”

(weak human shell laying in ruin in ruins of a shack crafted of tree corpses and hopes of progress of finding a place to thrive he lay crying out and digging his nails into his throat and he thinks of him, Tim, Tim, please, help, show him the way)

(he knew Tim would never come)

(and he thought of Alex thought of the one who must have suffered the same as he is and he calls to him, I’ll be joining you soon, old friend)

“It doesn’t make it okay, how he acted out. But it’s why I wanna forgive him, he does seem to feel bad about it, I just don’t know if I can forgive him. If I’m capable of it. Does that make sense?”

Amy’s branches whisper her thoughts when a breeze slices through the still air. Her hand sits still upon his shoulder. Uncertain.

“I think so. It’s still fucking confusing though.”

Bowing his head, Jay lets the petals upon his head flutter down, opening his palms to catch them. Bright, pink, impossible in this broken world. He holds them close to his heart.

“I never said it made much sense. You’re turning into a tree. What’s supposed to make sense about any of this?”

“Good point.”

Amy reaches up for something within his peripherals. She drops the new flower from her head into his hands and wanders to the river, the sole point of reference they have for telling where they are. Her toes curl, uncurl, and lengthen into ropey strands, resembling the roots that Jay often trips over during their walks together. 

“…what does that feel like?” he ponders aloud, watching the toe-roots sink into the mud shore. They suck, draining the dirt of moisture. Her eyes roll up into her head, shoulders dropping, no more tension. 

“Like taking your bra off after a long day, honestly. Keeping my feet normal gets to hurt after a while.”

Taking bras off, binders, thick shirts that stole away the idea that there might be a human form under his clothes, Jay hasn’t thought about those matters in however long. 

Does Tim still have his extra binder in case he left his at the last hotel they were resting in? Does Alex remember when he came out during a long shoot at the park, when he begged him for his hoodie so he could wear it and shuck off the ribcrusher beneath his shirt?

Amy still remembers her struggles, obviously, if she recalls bras and their constricting bands upon her torso.

When he lays his head down on Alex’s blood-soaked shoulder that evening, he dreams of deer, galloping past the car and into the safety of the trees. Tim stamps his heel onto the brakes when one of them fails to go join its brethren, freezing in the middle of the black road. The car horn screams, turns into a fatal shriek in Jay’s ears. 

The tiny fawn does not move, does not twitch an ear. 

Jay steps out of the car to chase it, but when it whips its head around to look at him, the baby does not flee or cower at the sight of him.

He is approached as a child would its parents. Cold wet nose, pressing into his hand, loving eyes looking into his, innocence meeting innocence.

When he opens his real eyes, he sees his hand laying in a patch of mud, cold, wet.

A pair of firm-- somethings, he calls them somethings, refuses to call them horns-- are standing atop his skull, proud, if little.

His head doesn’t hurt anymore. The flower clasped to his heart as a lifeline has not wilted.


	6. innocence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new arrival comes to Jay, Alex, and Amy, boneless and broken. When Jay finds out that Tim is the one that sent this poor man screaming into their world, he finds himself at a loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for blood, broken bones, body horror as usual, and references to murder.   
> As you can see, there's an ending number of chapters now. :)

Brian screams.

Jay, in what little memory is left of the man, never heard Brian scream before. Coughing up crimson, wheezing out the poison from his lungs, that’s the closest he’s come. Those incidents were on film as well, and it wasn’t Brian himself but the hooded creature that infected his body.

This is real. This is visceral, horrifying to behold. A broken man, pressed into the dirt by wooden tendrils sprouting from Amy’s sides. His nails turn red, clawing out their owner’s flesh, leaving long awful marks on his face. Soon enough his arms are held down as well, and he sobs louder, back arching to unleash the strangled noises inside of him. 

Alex was the one to find him. Right beside a bed of wilted colorless flowers, he said, head tilted at an entirely wrong angle. Jay kept at Amy’s side, nibbling at the leaves she fed him, neither moving from the dirt where they awoke tangled together. They briefly pondered Alex’s whereabouts before deciding it didn’t matter, he would find their way back to them. It’s difficult to miss them, especially as Amy’s skin is glowing a neon pink lately.

“He wasn’t screaming when I found him,” Alex insisted, barely heard over the cries of the brunet clutching at the small of his back. Brian’s voice tore Amy and Jay from their almost-bliss, alerting them to the intrusion of a new companion. They jumped up, ready for anything (ready? is that the word that should be used, when they have nothing left?)-- and found they didn’t know what to do. 

They still don’t, they want to help but what can they do but keep from Brian hurting himself further? 

“Let me go! Let me go, you fucking monster!”

His words cut deep for Amy, deeper than they could have for Jay. Jay knew Brian, but she knew him through Alex, his best friend. Their link runs a thicker, more powerful current, and Brian, in his throes of agony and terror, has disrupted that current.

“If I do, you have to promise not to hurt yourself,” Amy offers that condition, but Brian’s screaming does not end. He shakes under her hold, looking up with teary eyes.

Alex doesn’t look. Keeps his head down, keeps his own eyes averted. There isn’t anything he can do-- nothing Jay can do either, but Alex keeps stepping closer, reaching out to Brian, but every time he crosses the man’s vision, the screaming judders into sobbing. 

Whatever happened to Brian, it’s obvious he isn’t going anywhere on his own. His legs kick, but they can’t kick as they ought to. Scraping lines into the dirt with the heels of his sneakers, he lifts a leg, and gasps sharply, foot flopping back down. 

Still, Amy holds him in place, standing at his side and watching close. It’s like no matter how much it might hurt, he’s determined to maintain he’s capable of fighting them off. 

“His spine’s been damaged,” Alex speaks up, when Brian’s voice begins to give out on him. He breathes hard, ragged, lungs torn up inside. His eyes dart back and forth, to each of the three that stand over his prone form. “I think you could find a way to keep it straight, Amy.”

The blonde nods, no questions asked. She extends the limbs that she has tied around Brian’s arms and legs, roots growing out until they reach his torso. They snake around him, looping over his belly, his chest, until he’s straightened out. The lengths that were wrapped along his legs and arms move away, leaving them bare save for the torn pair of jeans and a ratty yellow hoodie. His spine is forced to stay straight by the tendril-like branches, held in place.

Satisfied, Amy snaps her arms away, handiwork losing its color and solidifying against Brian’s body. She reforms her hands, or what she has left of them, stiff and covered in the tiniest twigs. 

“What happened to him?” Jay asks, daring to reach out and touch Brian’s stomach. The man whimpers weakly under him, but he remains still, limbs laying calmly at his sides. Fog settles over his eyes, and he drifts to a place in his mind where he believes he’s safe, far away from these strange people he recognizes but doesn’t /want/ to recognize.

“…Tim chased him and he fell a long way out a window.”

Jay blinks. His elongated ears twitch at the sides of his head. 

“I don’t… I don’t believe you. Why would Tim do that to Brian?”

(Jay doesn’t know exactly what he assumed upon seeing Brian. He did not look at him and think for a second that Tim was the one behind his misery. The likely thought that Alex was the one who did this to him sat there instead, lingering in the back of his mind. Alex got to Brian, just as he got to Jay and Amy.)

“Because he’s fucking careless and apparently can’t tell when it’s his best friend underneath a mask,” Alex snaps, his voice transforming into a poison that numbs Jay. His blood rushes in his ears, but it doesn’t reach his face. Alex is near him now, right at his side, brown eyes burrowing into his heart and demanding he take back his underlying accusation. “What? You think Tim is perfect or something?”

“No! He, he just wouldn’t--”

“Get used to it, Jay, everyone here’s guilty as the next person,” he spits before stomping over to Brian’s side. He kneels down, blocking Jay out, and leaving Amy to glower at him. He may have spoken out of anger but it’s hardly the first time Alex has thrown her under the bus.

Jay tells himself to stay, help Brian, keep a fight from breaking out. 

His feet are carrying him away, though, taking him somewhere he doesn’t know of. The river sloshes underneath his dragging blackened toes, and he very nearly slips, lets the water take him away, but he makes it to the other side, to wherever that may be. This forest is miles and miles of the same image, imprinted upon his tired eyes a thousand times in a row until he’s exhausted and forces himself to dream of other images. 

Jay’s palms bleed when they strike against the dirt and skid. He lets it happen, stares into nothing, his body frozen and brain stagnating. 

In his final hours, he believed wholly and fully that Tim was a liar. Jay had no time for liars, no heart for them. His warped heart believed many wrong things about Tim-- based on the bits of truth that were fed to him by the hooded creature.

Nobody could’ve convinced him even then that Tim was capable of killing.

They knew they would have to face Alex, possibly become violent with him, but Jay never got as far as thinking that he would have to murder him. He never let his brain push the matter. Too terrifying. Too much heavy fate lying in his hands.

Tim is why Alex is here. 

He knew how Tim must have put Alex here, the evidence is in the wound that Alex insists on picking at but he never let the thought settle, let it fully form, think to himself that yes, /yes/, Alex is dead, Tim killed him.

And if Alex is to be believed, Tim killed Brian as well.

If Jay had crossed Tim the wrong way, would the bullet embedded inside of him be from another hand? Would he be the third man upon Tim’s list?

(But he wouldn’t--)

(But he did.)

“Jay?”

Amy’s voice hovers over his head, a gurgling noise emerging from a thick and soupy fog. He blinks, and sinks onto the dirt completely, his body limp and useless. Soft petals tickle the back of his neck, fluttering down. They rain down, the quietest storm.

“Alex says to tell you he’s sorry. He was just scared for Brian.”

Jay’s voice creaks when he tries to use it. He lets it be.

“He also said that… Brian was the hooded man. I don’t know what that means but he was really pressing on me to tell you that part. So. Take that as you will.”

Amy doesn’t walk away, though Jay wishes she would. Her attention, piled up on him, pushing him to the ground, it’s too much, a straw on top of a breaking back.

(Broken backs. Hah. As if he has any room to be talking about that.)

The hooded person, Brian underneath that mask-- hurting his best friend, hurting Jay, hurting Alex, hurting an innocent woman he couldn’t have possibly known, it doesn’t make sense. 

But as Jay lies in pieces, he has to admit to himself, who else would it be? Who else would know Tim’s secrets, and would be able to find the both of them that easily?

(Alex was scolding him for implying Tim was anything but flawed, while Brian, Brian, the one that came closest to innocent among those connected to them besides Jessica, has the most blood on his hands.)

“It wasn’t him though,” Jay says aloud, not to Amy, but to himself. Nonetheless, she chimes in with a soft ‘of course’. Branches reach out, stroke his hair, his horns. They grow every day, little by little, a new weight on top of his head to remind him of where he is-- and what he is. 

“I think we should go back, honey.”

The branch in his hair creaks when fingers sprout from it, scratching into his scalp. His nerves sing, bringing him closer to normal but not quite there. Pushing up on his elbows, he struggles to stand upright, never daring to look down too long at the bare skin of his feet. If it can be called skin anymore, that is.

“I guess if I can deal with Alex, I can deal with Brian,” Jay utters, again, mostly to himself. 

He can face his own murderer, feel his touch and warmth when they struggle back into a world of dreams together. If he can do that, nightly, daily, he can do anything. Right?

That’s what he tells himself, that’s what he repeats as a mantra while he kneels at Brian’s side. He promises him it’ll be alright, that he’s safe now and that he doesn’t have to worry anymore, and Brian touches his head, pets his horns. He is gentle as Jay was told he once was.

He closes his eyes, pretends he is blind to the yellow hoodie staring him in the face. If he catches Brian’s eye, he catches a glimpse of red glaring back at him, accusatory. 

It’s in his head. It’s imagined. It must be.


	7. reflection of a face that is not his

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no such thing as oneself in this place, Jay cannot be himself. He has to be two people for one, and the others must do the same, or there is no relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a character having to deal with hearing voices, mild self harm, mentions of blood, and body horror as usual. 
> 
> I might do more for this story but for now, consider it finished. It was more of an exercise in playing with non-human characters and maybe letting myself go on a sadistic streak.

Amy and Brian grow closer than neither Jay nor Alex could’ve expected.

They are creatures that can move, but not without pain. Bark creaking, bones cracking, they lean upon each other for support, carrying one another to the river for a drink. Amy helps him to lay down, letting him grip her torso and arms for support. He stays down for hours, breathing hard at first as the storm of pain wears out. She stays behind him, relaxed, no need to force normalcy upon her bark flesh.

That leaves Jay and Alex to their own devices most of the time, whenever their other companions are busy giving support. They don’t speak-- Jay tries to, time to time, and he falters the moment he so much as doubts he has Alex’s attention. Alex will open his mouth, look at Jay, and his voice will falter when his gaze falls to the crater in the man’s body.

The temperature in this forest never rises, only drops, and they’re forced to share their heat, become one hundred and ninety six degrees together. The four of them here are never themselves, on their lonesome, because lonesome no longer seems to exist. It is JayandAlex, or JayandAmy. AmyandAlex, AmyandBrian. AlexandBrian, and, very rarely, JayandBrian.

Jay hasn’t been himself, hasn’t been Jay, in a long time.

He hasn’t been human either. His body has accepted the additions to it, ears grown long and furry, the soft fuzz brown as his hair. These horns have pointed edges now, branching out and fit to stab through anything that might threaten him. His hands are cold more often than not, because he finds he can’t move his toes and fingers individually anymore. Walking isn’t a problem but he often has to stuff his hands under his shoulders for warmth. 

Nothing belongs to him, not his identity, not his body, not even his thoughts.

“I can hear everything.”

Alex vibrates next to him, the two of them seated by the trickling river. That’s the only word for it: vibrate. His nails aren’t in his neck anymore but they are everywhere, they are constantly in his flesh and he cannot stop. Pupils blur while his eyeballs rove within their sockets. Any moment they will come rolling out onto the floor and Alex will be as eyeless as the creature that turned him into this maddened quaking mess.

“I hear you, Jay,” Alex says to him in a hush, fingers painting red streaks down his pale arms. He leans in close, cold breath puffing against Jay’s throat. His teeth come too close for comfort but Jay doesn’t even twitch. “You’re thinking about Tim again. You’re wondering if he’ll still want to be near you when you’re like this. Which is funny. I’m the one who’s a freak, I can stare into your head and I know exactly what’s on your mind and everything is in your mind, I can hear the everything inside of you.”

The shattering man beside him speaks out of self-hatred. Just as Jay sees himself as the most disgusting and malformed of the three of them, Alex might peer into their river and see a creature reaching an uncomfortable level of kinship with the monster that locked him away in this place. It too could see more than it deserved to, though it seemed to relish in such things while Alex wants nothing to do with what is inside Amy and Jay’s heads. 

Can he see that Jay wants to tear his ears from his head and let the blood pour until his head is empty? That these horns ache to the touch, forever newborn and too sharp? How he doesn’t trust himself to bow his head before Amy or Brian anymore, though he may not even feel threatened by them?

“Yes,” Alex utters, his reddened nails making their way into Jay’s skin. He does not pick at him or claw him into pieces, like Jay fears he’ll do one day-- but what more can Alex do to him that he hasn’t done already? “I heard that. I don’t know what I can do. I don’t wanna find out.”

His breath stutters, and he looks down into his hands. If he watches his veins pumping beneath the surface long enough, will the poison inside of him begin to glow, and will he see what ails him? 

“I think I’m melting from the inside, you and Amy are turning into somethings from the outside but I’m made of acid and, and, fuck, my insides, help me, Jay, god help me…”

He doubles over, bare feet shaking in the water. If it weren’t for the hand gripping the nape of his neck he would have slid in and, what, drowned, when they no longer need air? Jay hangs onto him nonetheless, pets at his hair, knows it can’t feel any good when his skin isn’t skin and Alex’s flesh prickles. Still, Alex clings to his arm and leans all he has left into him. 

“I’m sorry,” he croaks out, throat full of rocks and pebbles. “I’m so, so sorry, I’m sorry it’s like this, Jay, I’m sorry…”

Jay still does not say that it is okay. Still, he pets, he strokes, he holds.

He looks to Amy, standing a ways behind them, standing out amongst the gray as a beautiful point of color, all the color left in the world. She glows, watching them, not from pleasure, but she does watch, keeping a close eye. She is the opposite of every tree Jay ever knew, safe, calm, never whispering of secrets that ought not be whispered of. 

Brian knows he is safe beside her. He has not flinched or twitched once since he settled at her side, and if Jay didn’t know better he might mistake his grimace for a grin. 

He is untouched by this forest’s wiles thus far. Maybe he will be safe, in all his innocence, when his body was not his body and his mind was not his mind. 

Someday, that might change, but Jay prays. He does not know what he prays to, but he prays.

“I don’t want this for him,” Alex whispers from the safety of his chest. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

‘And I do?’ Jay catches himself thinking, wanting to squash the thought before it can come to surface but it’s out before he remembers, again, his thoughts are not his own. 

Alex presses his face into Jay’s chest. His heart flees in the face of the man who stopped it.

“I’m sorry.”

This time, Jay lets himself say it’s okay.


End file.
